Tests prove Quran parchment among oldest

LONDON — A British university disclosed Wednesday that scientific tests prove a Quran manuscript in its collection is one of the oldest known and may have been written close to the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

The announcement by the University of Birmingham thrilled Muslim scholars and the local community, which boasts one of the country’s largest Muslim populations. The find came after questions raised by a doctoral student prompted radiocarbon testing that dated the parchment to the time of the prophet, who is generally believed to have lived between 570 and 632.

A university assistant shows fragments of an old Quran at the University in Birmingham in central England. The Associated Press

“This manuscript could well have been written just after he died,” David Thomas, a professor of Christianity and Islam at the University of Birmingham, said of the fragment written in ink on goat or sheepskin.

“Parts of the Quran that are contained in those fragments are very similar indeed to the Quran as we have it today. This tends to support the view that the Quran that we now have is more or less very close indeed to the Quran as it was brought together in the early years of Islam.”

Muslim tradition says the prophet received the revelations of the Quran between 610 and 632 – but it wasn’t written down immediately. The first leader of the community after Muhammad’s death, Caliph Abu Bakr, ordered the book to be written and it was completed by the third leader, Caliph Uthman, in 650.

Thomas said tests conducted by Oxford University suggest the animal from which the parchment was taken was alive during the life of the Prophet Muhammad or soon afterward.

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